Viral marketing campaigns are designed to spread an idea, which helps to market a business. This form of marketing aims to put out material that attracts people’s attention and elicits discussion. There are certain qualities that set apart the online content that goes viral. The content has to focus on a positive subject or issue. It has to evoke strong emotional reaction from the target audience. People only talk and share the content if it evokes strong emotions in them. The online content has to be practically useful to the people it targets. Here are great examples of campaigns that have attained success over the years.

Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches’

In 2013, Dove launched a soap campaign that attained significant success online. The campaign tapped into women’s perceptions about their self-image. It managed to get over 135 million views. The Real Beauty Sketches’ was launched on April 14 and it evoked strong emotions especially in women. For this campaign, Unilever used the FBI sketch artist to produce drawings of female based on their self-perception and how a stranger perceived them. According to the results obtained from the campaign, women revealed individual insecurities when they described themselves. The video showed two images of the women to show their real selves and how they described themselves. Strangers had an objective description and perceived the women to be more attractive.

The campaign highlighted the fact that women tend to be too critical of themselves and they do not perceive their real beauty. It resonated with a large number of women. This is among the most successful viral marketing campaigns because it evoked emotion in the women who watched it. This made people more likely to start sharing the video. Unilever also put in place a comprehensive roll out strategy by partnering with Unruly and YouTube. This partnership played a significant role in the seeding and distribution strategy. The video was sent to leading media houses across the world and within a short time, it was shared by men, women, and even competitor brands. It was a positive message and it made women accept that are even more gorgeous than they think.

Burger King’s Subservient Chicken

Burger King launched its Subservient Chicken’ marketing campaign. The company wanted to introduce its TenderCrisp chicken sandwich by letting people know they can have chicken in any form. Burger King is renowned for its burgers but it wanted to expand its market share. The video featured a chicken in garters. This chicken would follow every command the audience gave. This marketing campaign was a hit among bloggers because Burger King’s had put in place a technology that allowed them to type in all kinds of commands. Users found the responses interesting. The chicken was watching TV, doing jumping jacks and push-ups and dancing. Burger King wanted users to know they had freedom to choose. The site got a million hits on the initial day and in a week there were 20 million views.

The campaign was a success because it was unique. Users got an opportunity to interact with the campaign. Burger King exploited technology to reach people in their 20s who enjoy interacting with technology. People love to have the power to choose and this ad campaign made it seem possible. The campaign made them believe that they can have chicken any way they want it and this made it one of the top effective viral marketing campaigns.